Working Class

This is the house into which my mother was born in 1936. Her father, James O’Connor, was a truck driver for the Providence Journal Bulletin newspaper. Her mother, Helen (O’Keefe) O’Connor, was not working when my mother was born, but did work most of her life as a sales clerk. My grandparents did not graduate

Canadiens

Clinton Colburn and Alberta Ripley, my great-grandparents, came from rural northern Nova Scotia, Canada —specifically, the little farming and timber town of River Philip. Settled in the 1770s, the town is still populated by its immigrant families. They were Methodists from Yorkshire, England, who acquired land grants to settle this “wild” area. The two 21-year-olds